MUSLIM EXTREMISTS STRIKE AT CHRISTIANS IN EAST AFRICAN ISLES

In Zanzibar, two church buildings razed; in Comoros, a Christian suffers disease, shunning

ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA – (ANS)- Far from the world media’s gaze in remote islands off the eastern coast of Africa, church buildings have been razed and Christians are being ostracized and imprisoned for their faith — leaving one with a skin disease.

Compass Direct News reports Christian leaders have said that in one week-long stretch last month, Muslim extremists destroyed two church buildings on Tanzania’s island of Zanzibar.

Compass says the extremists torched the building of the Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa in Mtufani Mwera, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Zanzibar town, at around 7 p.m. on Dec. 3, according to Pastor Julius Makoho.

Compass also reported that in the previous week in Kianga, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Zanzibar town, a throng of Islamic extremists demolished Siloam Church’s building.

According to the Compass report, Pastor Boniface Kaliabukama said that more than 100 Muslim extremists arrived at the church compound on Nov. 26 chanting “Allahu Akbar [God is greater].”

Further south, in Comoros — three tiny islands between Mozambique and Madagascar that declared independence from France in 1975 — a convert from Islam is suffering from a skin disease contracted in prison after his family threw him out.

Compass said the ordeal of Musta Kim began in March 2010 when, returning from an overnight prayer meeting, he found someone had broken into his house in Mdjwayezi village.

“What he thought would be a simple matter of reporting a burglary turned him into an outcast. While investigating, police stumbled onto Christian materials — a Bible and film — which changed the course of inquiry from pursuing thieves to asking why Kim was practicing a forbidden faith,” the Compass report stated.

With his health deteriorating, Kim made an appeal in the high court regarding his eight months of incarceration without trial, and he was released on Feb. 29, 2011. His family, however, rejected him, and Kim did not know who to turn to for shelter, medicine and food.